


To Feel the Sun from Both Sides

by gallifreyburning



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21774685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: After years of adventures and misadventures and Time Wars, Leela and Narvin are finally getting married. Unfortunately, someone objects to the union, and goes to great lengths to save Leela from making the worst mistake of her life.
Relationships: Leela (Doctor Who) & The Doctor, Leela (Doctor Who)/Narvin (Doctor Who), Narvin (Doctor Who)/Suffering (Inevitable)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56
Collections: Classic Who Secret Santa 2019





	To Feel the Sun from Both Sides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ifailedtothinkofaname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ifailedtothinkofaname/gifts).



> This fic is for the Classic Who Secret Santa exchange, and dedicated to [alyona11 (aka ifailedtothinkofaname)](http://alyona11.tumblr.com). The prompt was: "Narvin and Leela decide to get married. Leela sends a message to the Doctor, an invitation to attend the wedding. The Doctor receives the message and, upon realizing that Narvin is the groom, immediately undertakes a rescue operation." I know we chatted about this scenario _ages_ ago, maybe even a year or more? Needless to say, I'm utterly delighted that it ended up in my inbox as a prompt. As always, thank you for the inspiration!

As Leela walks down the steps in the auditorium, her eyes stay fixed on Narvin. He waits at the front of the room, a CIA briefing space that has been transformed into a makeshift wedding hall for today’s ceremony. Gazing back at her with the rapt wonder usually reserved for religious visions, he pulls absently at the fabric of his heliotrope groom’s gown. Romana stands beside him in her full Presidential kit, and Ace and Braxiatel wait off to the side, standing by as official ceremonial witnesses.

This morning, Ace had asked Leela if she was nervous about getting married. She thought carefully before responding, sorting through a froth of emotions, and declared that her excitement outweighed her nerves. After all, she and Narvin have been together for quite some time; the wedding is a formality, a legal promise, but after all the informal promises they’ve whispered to each other behind closed doors, this ceremony won’t radically alter their feelings or relationship. Except, of course, to make her Gallifreyan visa renewal infinitely easier, next year.

A tingling sensation begins in Leela’s toes, and just as she's beginning to resent Romana’s suggestion that she wear these strappy sandals instead of her boots, the feeling races up her legs and settles into her stomach. Her step falters, and she wonders if perhaps she was wrong – are these the wedding jitters that Ace spoke of? Or the cold feet Braxiatel warned her about over breakfast?

In an instant the tingling grows unbearable, flowing through her like pins and needles. Simultaneously, Narvin and Romana share a glance of alarm before he steps toward Leela, calling her name. She tries to reply, but the words die on her lips as the room goes dark.

* * *

The small group of friends assembled for the ceremony stare open-mouthed at the empty stair where Leela stood a moment ago.

“What,” Ace asks quite reasonably, “the fuck?”

“Illegal transmat,” Narvin replies automatically, his analytical brain already in overdrive as his hearts plunge into a panic-spiral. He feels the desperate need to shout at someone, maybe several someones, but he hasn’t a clue where to start. He turns to Romana. “Someone circumvented my security protocols. That's impossible!”

She seizes his arm in a gesture of comfort, but her knees have gone soft with shock and she ends up leaning into him a little. “Right. Right. We’ll deal with the how later. First, we have to figure out _who_.” She pauses, turning a heavy stare to the only silent person in the room. “Braxiatel?”

“What, _me_?”

Aha, someone Narvin can place in the _to-be-shouted-at_ column – someone he happens to enjoy shouting at, to boot! “This isn’t remotely amusing. Bring her back!”

“Do I look remotely amused, Narvin?” Brax replies as he lifts his hands, as if staring down the barrel of a gun. “I swear on Calantha’s helmet, I had no part in whatever just happened.”

“Do we believe him?” Romana asks the other two.

“No,” Narvin replies.

“Maaaaaybe?” Ace says at the same time.

“Dammit,” Romana huffs in irritation. Then, louder and more commanding, “Ace, summon the chancellery guard. Narvin, mobilize the CIA. We have an illegal transmat to trace, and a human to rescue.”

* * *

Leela stumbles as she lands on tingling legs and numb feet. She finds herself in a large, dim room, with walls structured like honeycombs and a half-dozen enormous crystals rising from the ground, as large as trees. For a wild, disoriented moment she imagines herself to be in an alien wilderness, but another blink clears her vision and she notices the circular pedestal gleaming in the center of the crystal columns. Her other senses come back online as the raging pins-and-needles fade from her body, and a warm thrumming sound confirms her suspicion: this is a TARDIS.

A Time Lord has stolen her away from her own wedding. This doesn’t look like the Master’s TARDIS, during that awful mission to find Finnian Valentine, but perhaps he redecorated.

Her hand folds around the hilt of her knife – she can’t wait to tell Narvin how wrong he was, to try to talk her out of wearing it to the ceremony – and she steps sideways, angling into a defensive position with her back against a column.

“I warn you,” she says, to whoever might be listening, “I do not enjoy being kidnapped. Show yourself, coward!”

A banging comes from the opposite side of the console, and then a blond head peeks around the crystal rotor. “Oh, it worked!” the woman chirps, hopping out with two large steps. Of a height with Leela, she wears a rainbow-bedecked shirt, and short trousers held up by suspenders.

Leela lifts her blade threateningly. “I do not know what evil scheme this is, and I do not care to find out. Return me at once, foul Time Lord, or you will taste the cold edge of my blade!”

“Foul Time Lords?” she echoes, wrinkling her nose as if this insult has brought a smell along with it. Rocking onto her heels, she continues, “I suppose, given the trouble you were in, it’s only natural to feel antipathy toward your tormentors. But really, painting an entire race with a broad brush isn’t great, is it? Kinda rude, really. I don’t remember you being rude.” Another pause. “Maybe a bit. More often than not, actually. You were quite rude, come to think of it.”

“What are you talking about, madwoman?” Leela says, voice rising in spite of her efforts to remain calm. “Trouble? The only trouble is what will come to you, if you do not release me!”

“Leela, it’s me! I mean, new me. I had straight blond hair once before, more than half a dozen bodies ago, but we didn’t cross paths then, so this look is probably a bit shocking.” She gestures to her hair, as if pointing out her angular bob should explain her entire identity.

The cadence of her words, and the stripes on her shirt that remind Leela of another striped piece of clothing, and the peculiar but familiar hum of this very peculiar TARDIS, all of these details coalesce into a very improbable picture.

Leela’s knife lowers a fraction. “Doctor?”

“The very one!” Her entire being radiates delight, and Leela swells with a corresponding sense of pride, the same sensation she felt when she managed to be clever and delight her own Doctor, with his curly brown hair and sly sarcasm. Her instincts feel the truth of this Time Lord’s identity; she has known many of the Doctor’s faces, but this version standing in front of her is a breathtaking revelation.

The Doctor hesitates almost imperceptibly, then throws herself forward and sweeps Leela into her arms, nearly knocking them both down with her enthusiasm. Instinctively, Leela returns the hug, angling her knife away from the Doctor’s back.

“You are so much shorter!” Leela blurts out.

The Doctor pulls away and glances down at her own legs, and then back at Leela, the two women standing at exactly the same height. “Am I? I’ve been this short before – remember the Zagreus business? I tried on that suit for a lark recently, cravat included; the trousers and shoes still fit perfectly.”

“I am glad to see you,” Leela says, sheathing her knife. “I was hoping to hear from you sooner.”

“Yes, I got your distress call,” the Doctor says, spinning around to seize a small, glowing box from the console.

Leela plucks it from her hands, turning it over to find the symbol of a lioness – the emblem she chose when Narvin helped her distill the message through a complicated Time Lord method, and put it in the box before sending it from Gallifrey. “This is not a distress call, it is an invitation to my wedding.”

“Exactly. An invitation to a wedding between you and _Narvin_ , of all the miserable creatures in all the universes. If that isn’t a colossal cry for help, I don’t know what is. I understood the _implied_ message behind your literal message, and I rescued you.”

“There was no implied message, and no need for rescue,” Leela sputters, shoving the box back at the Doctor. She catches it at her chest. “I am marrying Narvin – in fact, you stole me away from the ceremony, right in front of everyone!” Her eyes go wide. “They must be very worried.”

“I had another friend who unexpectedly appeared in my TARDIS in her wedding dress, once,” the Doctor says, her gaze dropping to the cube. She turns it over in her hands, as if reading hidden things in its depth. “She was brilliant, that friend. Anyway, that’s where I got the idea for the long-range transmat to pull you right here into my console room, lickety-split. Thanks to the invite, I knew exactly where and when you’d be. Clever, no?”

“No!” Leela says, definitely a bit shouty. “It was not clever at all, Doctor, it was very stupid!”

“You aren’t marrying _Narvin_ ,” the Doctor says, once again infusing his name with dismissive condescension, as if producing these two particular syllables is beneath her dignity. She plops the glowing message cube back onto the console. “To be frank, I wouldn’t have chosen Andred for you, either, but at least he had some flair to him. Chancellery guardsman can be bearable on occasion – in fact, my sixth incarnation had a particular soft spot. But Narvin? Unbearable! A CIA stooge with the personality and backbone of wet cardboard. Trust me, you were in desperate need of rescue.”

She begins flipping levers and twisting knobs, preparing for dematerialization.

“Narvin is not wet cardboard,” Leela says, coming to stand beside her at the console. She reaches out, resting a hand atop the Time Lord’s to still her movements and stop the TARDIS from taking off. “He is a good man, a worthy man.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” she replies, flippancy evaporating in an instant. A grave concern takes its place, and even though the Doctor’s face is different, Leela has seen this expression countless times, when the two of them confronted people clinging to self-destructive delusions. The Doctor obviously thinks Leela is one of those deluded people, and that Narvin is her method of self-destruction. “He’s CIA, for a start. A plodding rule worshiper, prone to selfishness and tunnel vision. He's done terrible things, and been irritatingly pedantic while doing them. He hit me once, you know, and tossed me right out of a building!”

Leela snorts. “I imagine you deserved it.”

“In fact, I did not,” she snaps, and then in a milder tone, “Not that time.”

Leela picks up the glowing cube and runs a thumb over the lion engraving. She and Narvin had debated – argued loudly and at length, actually – over various insignias until he relented and let her choose. “You say I do not know him like you do, which might be true. Your adventures with him have been far different than mine. But I have known him longest and witnessed the whole of him – his flaws and his strengths. Yes, he was once a coward. When we first met, he looked down upon me and had no room in his hearts for anything except Gallifrey. But over the years he has changed into someone …” she sucks in a breath, searching for words adequate to describe Narvin, and decides on simple truth “… into someone better.”

A wrinkle forms between the Doctor’s eyebrows, and she turns her whole body to face Leela. Her eyes, hazel now instead of blue, hold a familiar mix of pity and concern. “You’ve lived on Gallifrey too long, and I know what that place does to a person. I know how it distorts thinking and warps judgment.”

“You do not have to rely only on my word. Romana will say the same about Narvin. And Ace, too. Even Braxiatel –”

“No.” The Doctor holds up both hands in an emphatic gesture, her nose scrunching in disgust. “I wouldn’t take a character reference from _him_ , even if he swore on all the holy relics of Gallifrey in alphabetical order, starting with the Argyle Socks of Rassilon.”

Leela puffs out her cheeks in frustration. “You, of all people, always believed that people could be better. Why would you believe this of every alien we met during our travels, but not of another Time Lord?” She takes the Doctor’s hand – it’s a natural gesture with this incarnation, as instinctive as holding onto Romana. “And if you intervene in my life, kidnap me against my will, and think you know best for me no matter my wishes, then how are you any different than the Time Lords who sit on the High Council and pass judgment on the universe?”

“Now that's not fair," she scoffs, Leela's words skimming across her sense of self-righteousness. "They aren't neck-deep in the universe, trying to fix it. I know what I'm doing."

Something occurs to Leela - something that should have occurred to her earlier. There's no sound of footsteps in the TARDIS, no shouts or laughter, no hint of life except the Time Lord and her ship. "Doctor, is someone else here with you? Are you traveling with anyone?"

"What? Someone else?" Suddenly she's looking at everything except Leela, as if she can't bring herself to meet her gaze. "Not at the moment, they've just ... stepped out." The last two words are as soft as a fresh bruise.

This explains everything. Squeezing her hand, Leela says, “Take me home, and stay for the wedding. Witness for yourself the man Narvin has become. I am certain that Romana and Ace would be happy to see you again, too.”

With a resigned sigh, she squeezes Leela’s fingers in return. “I don’t see how a single ceremony would change my mind.”

“Ace has insisted we go on a thing called a honeymoon, after the ceremony.”

“Honeymoon?” The Doctor perks up considerably. “Where?”

“The twelfth moon of Yaribdis, in the Tramah System. Narvin and I could not agree on where to go, so Romana chose it for us. She says it has beautiful libraries and architecture, beside crystal-blue beaches crawling with wild creatures, so we shall both be happy.”

“The moon of Yaribdis?” the Doctor echoes, eyebrows climbing nearly to her hairline. “The one due for a violent cetacean revolution sometime during Patrician Elvew’s reign?”

“Cetacean?” Leela echoes.

“Dolphins,” the Doctor says in a conspiratorial whisper, her glee evident.

“I do not think Romana would send us there during a dolphin revolution,” Leela replies. “Not for a honeymoon, which Ace insists is for relaxation.”

“Wouldn’t she?” The Doctor’s hopeful expression doesn’t falter. “You’re sure about that?”

“Will you come?”

She grins excitedly and flips a lever. The crystal rotor groans, pumping to life as the TARIDS takes flight. “If you insist. We’ll go back to the wedding, right when you left, so no harm done. You say your ‘I do,’ and then the three of us pop off to Yaribdis’ Twelfth Moon for a spot of revolution.”

* * *

“Agent Wulfwel, continue running point at the Temporal Operations Watchtower, keeping an eye on the dragnet exercise,” Narvin says, standing at the lectern in front of the auditorium packed with CIA agents. In fact, it’s the exact same auditorium he was supposed to be married in yesterday, when Leela vanished right in the middle of the ceremony.

“Yes, sir,” Wulfwel says from the front row, ticking off symbols on his data pad. “I’ll add Division Four to my round-the-clock shift schedule, if that’s all right?”

“Whatever you need. Finding Agent Leela is top priority, no expense spared when it comes to resources.” He turns to Romana, who stands beside him. “President Romana, you wanted to deliver an update from your diplomatic contacts in the Yevnon and Monan governments?”

“I spoke with the High Monan just before this meeting, and –”

Her next word is drowned out by the loud, unmistakable sound of a TARDIS materializing. Romana and Narvin fling themselves backward, out of the landing zone. The onlooking horde of CIA agents haven’t a single staser between them, because carrying firearms is the sort of thing menial grunts in the Chancellery Guard do. They could use their chairs or datapads as weapons, but the thought doesn't occur to a single one of them; instead, they stare in hapless concern and mentally pre-compose incident reports as a blue box manifests practically on top of their Coordinator, and the President.

"Doctor?" Romana shouts over the TARDIS's lingering wails. Beside Agent Wulfwel in the front row, Ace is already scrambling forward, climbing onto the stage to join them. 

Almost before it's done materializing, the blue door is flung open and Leela dashes out.

A chorus of gasps and shouting erupts from the audience, and the three individuals onstage cry her name in joy and relief. Ace intercepts her before Leela reaches Narvin or Romana, which is just as well; Narvin never would have lived it down, if Leela had leapt into his arms and showered him with kisses in front of his agents. 

Two steps behind Leela, another woman emerges from the TARDIS. She's wearing a pale khaki trench coat and boots, her hands stuffed into her pockets as she surveys the assembled Time Lords. "See, Leela? Right on time for the wedding, just like I told you."

"Narvin is not wearing his purple robe, he is wearing the black-and-white one," Leela says, as soon as Ace lets her go. She comes to stand beside Narvin; he touches her hand, a wildly intimate public gesture, in full view of his agents. "This is not my wedding, it is a CIA mission briefing!"

"Doctor?" Romana stares in delighted shock, rushing over. "Is that really you?"

"Welcome back," Narvin murmurs to Leela. "Where, exactly, have you been? And why the bloody hell is the Doctor here?"

"I will explain later," Leela replies, delighted to finally be on the giving end of that maddeningly mysterious phrase. "After the wedding."

In the very back of the auditorium, almost inaudible under the din of excitement, comes a huffy exclamation: "Showy prat." It's immediately followed by the sound of door hydraulics squeaking as Braxiatel leaves the room.


End file.
